A shallow white dish of dark, glossy double-brewed soy sauce on weathered cedar boards beside slices of raw tuna, a block of chilled tofu and a scatter of soybeans and wheat grains

Yugeta Shoyu: A Century of Cedar-Barrel Soy Sauce in Saitama

September 28, 2026

Yugeta Shoyu brews soy sauce in Sakado, in Saitama Prefecture just northwest of Tokyo, where the brewery was founded on 5 September 1923. Its fourth-generation owner, Yugeta Yohichi, ferments in wooden vats and, according to the house's US importer, The Japanese Pantry, uses only Japan-grown soybeans and wheat. The bottle the importer brings to the US is the house's double-brewed shoyu, a style called saishikomi that makes up about 1 percent of Japan's soy sauce production. Saishikomi belongs to western Japan, centered on Yamaguchi, and Yugeta makes it in cedar on the edge of the Kanto Plain.

Who they are

The house dates its brewing line back more than two hundred years. Its first master, Yugeta Saju, is described on the corporate site as a man who "had done agricultural work but he was interested in zymurgy," the science of fermentation, and who received his equipment from a soy sauce brewery in what is now Iruma, also in Saitama. The business became Yugeta Shoyu Store Co., Ltd. in May 1948 and a corporation in September 1956. The family motto, in the house's English, is "We must treat each customer with honesty." The corporate site lists twenty employees and a factory capacity of 1,100 kiloliters.

The Japanese Pantry's founders met Yugeta-san in San Francisco in May 2015, visited his factory twice before the end of that year, and made his soy sauce their first import when they launched the following year. As the centenary approached in 2023, the importer reports, he commissioned a new cedar barrel from locally grown wood and bought twelve more barrels from another brewery, and a new aging warehouse was being built.

Year	Event	Source
Before 1923	Yugeta Saju takes over the equipment of a soy sauce brewery in present-day Iruma, Saitama	Yugeta
1923	Brewery founded in Sakado on 5 September	Yugeta
1948	Yugeta Shoyu Store Co., Ltd. established on 28 May	Yugeta
1956	Incorporated as Yugeta Shoyu Corporation on 28 September	Yugeta
2015	The Japanese Pantry's founders meet Yugeta-san in San Francisco in May	The Japanese Pantry
2016	Yugeta shoyu becomes the importer's first product	The Japanese Pantry
2023	Centenary: a new cedar barrel from local wood, twelve barrels bought from another brewery, a new aging warehouse being built	The Japanese Pantry

The water and the wood

Brewing water is drawn from 80 meters underground, in the alluvial fan that runs from the Chichibu mountains to the Kanto Plain. The house says about 100 tons a day rises from the springs near its Hidaka factory. The soy sauce ferments naturally in wooden vats that the house describes as having "microbes colonized in it." The house's English brand site calls the vats Japanese cedar and gives one year of aging for its standard sauce. One page of its corporate site calls them pine wood. The importer says cedar, and adds that some of the barrels are more than a century old.

The house also makes raw soy sauce, which it bottles without heat sterilization or microfiltration, so the yeast and lactic acid bacteria are still alive. It ships that sauce refrigerated and says to use it within six months, kept in the refrigerator, and within a month of opening. Its organic sauce uses domestic organic soybeans and wheat, certified under Japan's organic JAS standard, and the corporate site lists Mexican solar salt among its ingredients.

What double-brewed means

For saishikomi, the importer explains, Yugeta-san brews a first batch of soy sauce, then makes a second batch with fresh koji and uses the finished soy sauce from the first in place of the salt and water. Writing in the Kikkoman Institute's food-culture journal, Yuka Utsunomiya says the style is matured for 18 months to about two years, which makes it dark, and is high in umami because the preparation is done twice. The importer gives no aging length for Yugeta's bottle. It does say that a few years ago the house moved this sauce out of steel vats and into cedar barrels, when it was already the importer's own best-selling soy sauce.

Utsunomiya traces the style to Yanai, a port on the Seto Inland Sea in Yamaguchi Prefecture. According to an 1895 family record she cites, it was invented in the 1780s by Takada Denbei, the fourth head of a brewing house there. Local tradition has the feudal lord Yoshikawa tasting it and saying "kanro, kanro," sweet dew, which is why the older name is kanro shoyu. The Japan Soy Sauce Brewers' Association still places saishikomi between the San-in region and Kyushu, centered on Yamaguchi. A saishikomi brewed in Saitama is a long way from the style's home ground, although Utsunomiya notes that it is now made across the country.

Type	Share of Japanese production	Home region	Source
Koikuchi, the standard	About 80 percent	Not given in the association's summary	Brewers' Association
Usukuchi, light in color	About 10 percent	Kansai	Brewers' Association
Tamari	About 2 percent	Chubu	Utsunomiya; Brewers' Association
Saishikomi, refermented	About 1 percent	Yamaguchi, San-in to Kyushu	Utsunomiya; Brewers' Association
Shiro, extra light	Not given in the association's summary	Hekinan, Aichi	Brewers' Association

The arithmetic of a small brewery

A stated capacity of 1,100 kiloliters shared among twenty employees is 55 kiloliters per person. In 360-milliliter bottles, the size of the double-brewed sauce sold in the US, 1,100 kiloliters would fill about 3.06 million bottles. That is the factory's stated capacity, not its reported output, and the site does not say over what period. The saishikomi is only part of that figure.

Saishikomi also takes more to make. The second batch starts from fresh koji and uses a finished soy sauce in place of brine, so every bottle draws on two separate mashes. Utsunomiya calls it a luxury item because it takes time and effort to produce.

The bottle

The importer lists four ingredients for Yugeta double-brewed shoyu (shop Yugeta double-brewed shoyu): water, soybeans, wheat and salt. It describes the sauce as richer and more viscous than regular soy sauce and says it tastes less salty, though it publishes no sodium figure. The Brewers' Association describes saishikomi as dense in color, flavor and fragrance, and as a sauce mainly used at the table, with sashimi, sushi and chilled tofu. It is a sauce for dipping and finishing more than for the stockpot. A few drops over rice or cold noodles show what the second batch adds. The umami piece explains where that savory depth comes from. It also holds its own stirred into chili crisp over fried eggs. For a fermented seasoning from another tradition, the Noma Projects and Mushroom Garum guide makes a useful comparison.

The house also makes a yuzu-flavored soy sauce, and the Saitama tourism desk lists its Yuki Shoyu and its Yuzu Shoyu among its award winners. The yuzu guide covers the fruit itself. For where an open bottle should live, see the pantry storage guide.

Visiting Saitama

According to Saitama Prefecture's tourism desk, the Hidaka factory at Tabame 804-1, Hidaka City, runs free tours of twenty to thirty minutes at set times on weekdays and weekends, with no reservation needed except for groups. Visitors can taste the sauces, try squeezing a barrel, and eat soy sauce ice cream and grilled dango dipped in shoyu. The house also has a shop in nearby Kawagoe, which is closed on Tuesdays. Its website offers a virtual factory tour.

Yugeta's double-brewed shoyu is listed at theambrosianpantry.com. The shop is at 263 Josephine Street in Cherry Creek, Denver.